Weight lost question for the non-******s/ guessers/blaggers

Little calories and lots of cardio will make you lose muscle. You need a good balance.

 

Depends what weight you want to end up at, firstly. Is it for a 10st or 10st7 limit?
If you have 6 weeks of training till an event, and 33% of that time is spent only on focusing on weight loss.. it paints a different picture as far as your preparation goes doesn't it? I would probably just try and incorporate things you can do all the time without hurting your proper training. If that means eating CLEAN 100%, you do it. If that means eating clean 80% of the time but being super strict with longer cardio 5 days a week, then you do it. You can try some other stuff like trying to cut out white bread, white pasta after midday or something like that, and most dairy altogether, they affect different people in various manners, I know some guys who swear by no dairy when trying to lose some lbs. You can drop and put on a fair bit with a 24hr weighin, now I'm not going to tell you how to do that as you're a professional but if you have over a whole day to rehydrate you could drop a good few lbs and be fighting fit.
Overall it will be about small changes in the longterm, this inevitably works better than all the short term blasts, in most cases, and across different fields, be it diet or training. (crash diet 2 weeks and eat whatever for 4 weeks vs eat 90% strict for 6 weeks). The shorter blasts are easier mentally for some people, but the Bernard Hopkins of the world will be playing the longterm game and reaping the rewards.

Now your question was, blast weightloss to not have to worry about dieting later on, on paper it makes sense, but in reality 2 weeks is not long enough for any real fat loss, so you would just go back to your original weight or similar unless you did what you did in the first 2 weeks, for the next 4, which is what you are trying to avoid. Think of the overall progress you can make over 6 moderate weeks, versus as concentrated as you like for 2 weeks.

And you know, **** it, how do you feel in the ring at 10st7 and how do you feel at the heavier/lighter class (whichever the other option is)? Don't just follow what you think you SHOULD weigh, if you are performing better, feeling better and stronger mentally at a different weight, go for it, but that's not always necessarily downwards.

 

This.

 

Of course Jeff is an accomplished pro and he probably knows what class the money is in for him, but thought it was worth a mention, especially to his other dudes who won't be at his level. The less time you spend strict dieting, in a dehydrated state, at a lower bodyweight, the stronger/more energetic/happier mentally you will be, in general. This isn't a contradiction to my "low and slow" thinking with the weight loss, as that wouldn't be strict nor should it be a mental strain. Just small things you can change and be consistent over a long period with will trump any crash period of dieting. To be fair though you were in good nick recently and the pics you put on Facebook, so I wouldn't think there's a great deal to look at in that area.

 

I agree with everything that Mr. Small said.

Yes, I believe it makes considerably more sense to cut now than later considering that as the workload increases, you will need more and more carbs/calories for energy. I think that cutting gradually over many weeks allows an individual to become more "comfortable in their own skin" and is certainly not such a shock to the system.

I do still believe in the water cut if one weighs in the day before the event and has time to hydrate properly. As a rule, 8% of bodyweight is the water cut.